I'm having a crack at installing Debian on an old computer at home to see if I can handle the shift from Windows. Unfortunately I haven't got too far as I can't get the mouse to work in Xfree86 config. When I'm trying to install Xfree86, and I get to the config stage, there seems to be no options which make the mouse go. It worked OK under windows so should be no problems hardware-wise. It is a Microsoft 2 button serial mouse connected to COM 1. There does not seem to be a ttyS0 option which I would assume is the right thing to choose. Why is this not there?

Thanks for any help

OK, pretty much everything in Linux is stored as a plain-text file. Try setting up X as you would normally, but set your mouse/pointer to something like PS2. Then, when you're happy that it all works (apart from the mouse), edit the config file manually and change the appropriate line(s) so that it uses the ttyS0 device.

Alternatively, if you have the option of using /dev/mouse as your input device, try symlinking ttyS0 to mouse prior to running your Xconfig program. For example: (as root) ln -s /dev/ttyS0 /dev/mouse

Hope this helps.

It is Debian that I am using, and I wonder if there is support for a serial mouse in the Kernel. How do I choose to include this in the install process, or am I barking up the wrong tree?